Feedly RSS service crippled by ongoing DDoS attack [update]

Update: It looks like Feedly was able to neutralize the DDoS attack that crippled the news reader service for hours today. "We have neutralized DDoS attack that began at 2:04am PST last night," the company wrote in a blog post, noting that "it might take a few hours for some of the 40 millions feeds we poll to be fully updated." Feedly should work now on the website and through various apps.

Original story:

RSS aggregator service Feedly has been down since early this morning. the victim of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. Feedly, which has come away as one of the leading services for news junkies in the wake of the Google Reader shut down, ties into numerous third-party apps across all mobile platforms, as well as their own apps for iOS and Android, and a web client. The DDoS attack took down Feedly's service early this morning, and appears to be ongoing.

In a post on the Feedly blog, the company explained that the attack comes after an attempt to extort them for money. Feedly isn't the only service that's been struck — Evernote was taken down briefly this morning, but was able to recover within a few hours. Feedly went down at around 5:00 AM Eastern Time and as of publishing time was still more or less down.

A DDoS attack uses a network of remotely-controlled computers (often infected with and taken over by malware) to target a network or server with an overwhelming number of requests, bringing the service to its knees.

Feedly is near and dear to our hearts here at Mobile Nations, serving as most of our RSS readers of choice since Google Reader went the way of the ghost. Having Feedly down is an inconvenience, of course, but it's also emblematic of the problems that providers of internet services face — pay up or we'll burn down your house.

We'll let you know when Feedly returns (we'll be excited too), but in the meantime, how are the Feedly users out there coping?